It is extremely uncomfortable for Englishmen to believe, that their ancestors did not immediately discern the beauties of a poem, which they now consider as the boast of the nation. Each succeeding biographer and critic, accordingly, thinks himself bound to prove, that it was hailed with abundant praise, both express and implied; and nothing can equal the satisfaction, with which they parade a new witness, with or without name, who has said any thing, for or against Paradise Lost. First, there is Edward Phillips, the nephew of the author,-if he did not consider himself as partly the author; for he tells us, 'he had the perusal of the poem from the very beginning for some years, as he went from time to time to visit him, in a parcel of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time, which, being written by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction as to the orthography and pointing.* It would have been a wonder, indeed, of Edward Phillips had failed to applaud his uncle's performance; and we can only say, that his praise, even in the translation of Mr. Godwin, is given with a great deal more of reserve, than was to have been expected from a person in his situation. The poem will receive, if I mistake not,' says he, "the name of truly heroic, and is adjudged by the suffrages of many, not unqualified to decide such a question, to have reached the perfection of this species of poetry.'t This is the language of a man, who is conscious, that he is speaking against the general voice; and only durst venture into public with his own opinion, under cover of the subjunctive mood. In the original, indeed, it can hardly be called his own opinion. He relies upon those, whom he calls good judges; and tells us, it is because they have praised the poem, that he feels inclined to call it truly heroic. Verè heroicum, ni fallor: plurium enim suffragiis, &c.'+ Ph. ap. Godw. p. 376. + Godw. p. 145. + Enum. Compend, Poet. ap. Buch. 1669. The younger nephew, too, must be summoned upon the same side; though he bitterly reviles the author, in one book, and speaks with contempt of his poem, in another. It is enough, that he has mentioned the two names. He will count; and may kill his man. In 1676, he wrote a continuation of Heath's Chronicle; and, under the date of 1649, he has the following passage upon the man, who enabled him to be so abusive: To better the condition of the king our sovereign, Charles the second, as to his kingdom, came forth several defences of his authority in several treatises, especially that of Salmasius, called the Royal Defence, (which one Milton, since stricken with blindness, cavilled at, who wrote also against that incomparable book and remains of king Charles the martyr, about this time produced to light, though endeavoured by all means to be suppressed, called Eikon Basilike, in an impudent and blasphemous libel, called Iconaclastes, since deservedly burnt by the common executioner) doth justly challenge to be here registered."* Under the date of 1664, the burning of books, by the common executioner, is justified upon the same principle, that men may be hanged after they are dead. 'Nor can we omit,' says he, the punishment of a criminal book, long after the author's decease. For with the same justice may books, as well as men, be executed for treason.'t In 1687, the same author translated Don Quixote; and, among numberless other English subjects, he contrives to introduce Paradise Lost as one of the books, which Don Diego de Miranda says, his son did not relish. 'He spends whole days in his criti cisms,' says Diego, whether Homer said well or ill in such a verse of his Iliads, whether Martial were bawdy or no in such an epigram, whether such or such a verse in Virgil ought to be understood in this way or that way. He is a great admirer of Horace, Persius, Juvenal, and Tibullus; but of your modern writers he makes small account. Among the rest, he has a particular pique against Du Burtas and Paradise Lost, which, he says, has neither rhyme nor reason."* This, says Mr. Godwin, is certainly a homage paid at the shrine of Milton's fame. It is not thus that an obscure and inglorious poet will ever be spoken of.' We suppose, Du Burtas is a renowned and glorious poet; and was, on that account, named before Milton in the same sentence of damnatory praise. Those, at any rate, who are determined not to think, that Du Burtas was 'obscure and inglorious,' will have this decisive fact, and Mr. Godwin's authority, to bear them out. The next witnesses are Barrow and Marvel; who prefixed laudatory verses to the second edition of Paradise Lost. We should like to know, if there was any author, in those days,-whether he wrote in poetry, or prose, upon law, or physic, or divinity, or politics, or any thing else,--who could not find two friends to write a few lines in praise of his book? Had these precious verses even appeared in the first edition, it would have been no proof of merit. It was the fashion of the times to preface all works with such encomiums. Jonson's Sejanus called forth eight; and Browne's Pastorals had nineteen. They were as necessary as a title page; and many a forgotten book has more copies of verses to the first and only edition, than Paradise Lost has to the second. Again, we are told by these eulogists, that Dryden wrote a hexastich upon the author; but we are not told, that, reflecting upon the unpopularity of the poem, the same poet once thought to make it better known by tagging it with Ap. Godw. p. 259. rhyme. There is, it seems, a Dr. Woodford, who, in a Paraphrase upon the Canticles, published in 1679, has something in praise of Paradise Lost.† There is a Samuel Slater, too, who, in the same year, was much taken with the learned Mr. Milton's cast and fancy;' though he thought his own correcter pen' might improve that 'gentleman's style.' Roscommon cited a passage from Paradise Lost, in his Essay on Translated Verse, published in 1680.§ An anonymous translator of Jacob Ctesius, in the same year, talks of a Cowley, and a Milton.' Sheffield's Essay on Poetry, when first printed in 1682, contained some lines, in which Milton was placed below both Torquato and Spencer; but, in a subsequent edition, the names were transposed, and Milton placed above both. The writer of the noblest epic, he says, in the first, Must above Cowley, nay and Milton too prevail, In the second, Must above Tasso's lofty flights prevail, Succeed where Spencer, and even Milton fail. In the next year, the situation of paradise was found out,' by an unknown author; who had occasion to quote some verses from the fourth book of Milton's poem. The first book was translated into Latin in 1685; and, two years afterwards, another nameless author, in a Poem to the Memory of Waller, is detected in using the name of Milton.** Atterbury praised him in 1690: a Mr. W. W., in a book upon Ecclesiastes, published in the following year, commends him for rejecting rhyme; and Patrick Hume wrote annotations upon the poem, in 1695.†† Scot. Dryd. vol. i. TOL. VI. Todd, vol. i. p. 114. K Mr. Godwin brings in the Athenian Mercury as paying early honours to Paradise Lost;' nor does he seem to consider it as at all an unfavourable cir cumstance, that this author, twenty-five years after the poem had been published, seriously propounds and discusses the question, whether Waller or Milton was the greatest poet?* In 1694, Charles Gildon, in a volume of Miscellaneous Letters, devotes one to the Vindication of Mr. Milton's Paradise Lost. The poem had now been published nearly thirty years; and yet, so little had it exalted the fame of the author, that Gildon can only speak of him under the epithet of Mr. Some of the other testimonies offend our ear in the same way; and, indeed, in reading the praises of them all, a modern can hardly help imagining how he should feel, if a person were to tell him, as a piece of information, by the by, that this Iliad, by Mr. Homer, is a very fine poem.' There are two witnesses of a different description. Mr. Godwin considers it as a good omen, that, in 1677, the celebrated Thomas Rhymer, the loudest and the fiercest of all the adversaries that ever assailed the reputation of Shakspeare, in his Tragedies of the Last Age Considered, threatens shortly to issue from the press, some reflections on that Paradise Lost of Milton's, which some are pleased to call a poem.' It was now ten years since the poem appeared; and Rhymer probably seeing, that it began to creep slowly towards fame, threatened to spurn it back to its original obscurity. Rhymer and Dennis were critics of the same character; yet Mr. Godwin is in such a strait for testimonies, that the censure of the one, and the praise of the other, are considered as equally honourable to his author of Paradise Lost.' Dennis published Letters on Milton and Congreve, in 1696; and Godw. pp. 288, 289. Id. ibid. + Ibid. p. 143. |